Looking for some informations on Ranger

Hi everyone, sorry for the title but couldn't find better.I'm planning on trying Ranger (or his specializations) again but I need to know few things before I invest time and gold on this class.First, I thought about playing ranger again because pets are a good way to make explo less boring/hard to get into, ranger can carry greatsword and god greatsword have the best legendary (I plan to get my first one). I'm not specially attach to the nature theme of the class but that don't block me either.

So I wanted to know :How dynamic is this class ? I currently play thief and revenant and I like them because even if rotation can be simple it's just fast paced action and I love itHow mobile is this class ? Like I say thief is my main.Is Greatsword fun to play in Power build ? I don't like condi build and I don't want my legendary GS to stay in my inventory. I don't necessarily want to do raid so I'm not searching for optimal build.I won't talk about survivability because pet give you some I guess.

Thanks for your help. I will add questions if others come to my mind

Its not as fast paced as thief or revenant, but not super slow either. Nice pace

Ranger is somewhere along the lines of mesmer/thief in terms of mobility. No ports, but lots of leaps and swiftness. I'd say it's quite mobile

Greatsword is great. Packs a meaty punch, good defense as well as some CC and evades. Great weapon choice for ranger

Ranger can be best described as having no middle band for skill mastery. On face value the skills and traits are fairly beefy, but they scale very poorly on synergy. This leads to a problem where high end ranger builds require a lot more stacking of traits to break even with other builds, and require very specific set ups and skill combinations to actually capitalize on them. The reasons are myriad, but much stems from Ranger coefficients working on the presumption that 25% of your damage output comes from your pet, the Pet scales separately from the Ranger when it comes to traits, and the majority of your damage modifiers being highly conditional or short lived buffs.

Damage oriented builds have to dedicate nearly all their utilities to damage modifiers or things that can trigger traits, but both Condi and Power Ranger builds (including Especs) suffer from very high maintenance to maintain their DPS potential. In practice Ranger apply mid damage over time, but accentuated by surges in DPS that rapidly fall off in a few seconds. This is different from spike damage, as the attack combos are actually back loaded (allowing it to countered), but the overall damage output is high enough to be lethal in that short window.

On the low end, the hefty face value of many of its skills makes it extremely durable in Open world, and is only taxed when overwhelmed. The OK sustained damage it what lets get a pass in Open world, since it pairs well enough with your durability to not constantly die at the drop of hat. But the moment you're put under real pressure, the Ranger can't rely on burst damage to deal with problems, which quickly shifts the demand toward active defenses to offset the lack of overwhelming burst damage. To get into serious damage builds, Rangers have to invest heavily as Glass cannon, and shifts all of its defenses into mobility, dodges and kiting. And this is where the problems with the Weapon skills start to stand out. The 1h Weapons have very obtuse defense features (if they have any), and main hands were designed to lightly kite a target, or stand there and just auto attack it. I wish this was a joke, but the math backs this up.... Sword and Dagger autos are the highest reliable DPS regardless off hand pairing. MH Axe is even weirder in that Split Blade is the most significant damage, but only at Point Blank so all 5 projectiles hit the intended target (and basically your only MH condi option if you aren't running Soulbeast).

With 2 handed weapons the Struggle is different. The 2h weapons are generally not worth running without their associated weapon trait, but there is major competition between trait lines, because Power damage modifiers are spread across 3 trait lines, Condition damage spread across 2, and the Elite specs having oddly specific synergy with other trait lines. You also have problems running mixed Ranged/Melee due to the trait layouts, despite this diversity being highly desirable, leaving only a hand full combinations that yield competitive damage (or support). Hands down the biggest victim of all this is Lb/GS..... arguably the best functional and logical weapon paring the Ranger has, but demands vexing compromises to properly augment. Power builds gain the most immediate benefits from Marksmans (raw damage modifiers) and Skirmishing (Crit damage modifiers), but your third trait line is your hardest choice. Core Ranger would take Beast Mastery, as its the only other line compatible with Power damage (adding extra sustain damage, but nothing for bursts). Druid gives up extra personal damage basically just to get access to Grace of the Land as a group buff.

With SoulBeast, the toss up is between the potential of a Condi build vs a Power Build. Condi on soulbeast is very potent.... I mean ridiculously so. Despite the longer ramp up time, dishing out an average of 4k condi per second (and the potential of 10k surges, with only personal buffs btw) is definitely worth taking notice of. The SB/X/Torch combo can deal with trash mobs easily enough, and Iboga is still great for the added AOEs and condi synergy. Which brings us to Power SB...... while there are LOT of modifiers you can abuse to deal heavy power damage, these are a LOT more discriminate, and a lot more work to properly setup. Power SB builds (SB, BM, MM) work on focusing damage modifiers to magnify the high damage of Maul (GS2)..... The Combo (while merged) is Sic'em, Maul, Hilt Bash, Maul again, followed by Worldly Impact- resulting in guaranteed Crit on each, +100% damage on top of all the passive damage modifiers for each Maul, and roughly +50% on the other 2. A 15-20k Maul hit isn't out of the question. The down side is that you're damage isn't nearly epic outside this combo. Granted, the GS's auto damage is also pretty solid, but it also means sticking in Melee range. Using Maul on Cool down against weaker mobs still hits for a lot. I would also state that the GS's defenses are really good in comparison to every other weapon it has, and is the only one I'd trust to actually keep in melee range with.

Aside from Support Druid and a WvW build, this sums up Ranger's "Think box"..... and thinking outside of this is punishable by mediocre performance, and a constant nagging feeling that this could be so much better if you had just one more trait to make it work. On paper it sounds great, because the builds seem to perfectly fit... but what I didn't fully go into is how the damage builds are Glass cannons by nature, and trying to take sustain traits or defense utilities very clearly messes with your damage potential. Frustratingly so in WvW and PvP, where you need mixed traits to not get burst down in an opening attack.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Ranger can be best described as having no middle band for skill mastery. On face value the skills and traits are fairly beefy, but they scale very poorly on synergy. This leads to a problem where high end ranger builds require a lot more stacking of traits to break even with other builds, and require very specific set ups and skill combinations to actually capitalize on them. The reasons are myriad, but much stems from Ranger coefficients working on the presumption that 25% of your damage output comes from your pet, the Pet scales separately from the Ranger when it comes to traits, and the majority of your damage modifiers being highly conditional or short lived buffs.

Damage oriented builds have to dedicate nearly all their utilities to damage modifiers or things that can trigger traits, but both Condi and Power Ranger builds (including Especs) suffer from very high maintenance to maintain their DPS potential. In practice Ranger apply mid damage over time, but accentuated by surges in DPS that rapidly fall off in a few seconds. This is different from spike damage, as the attack combos are actually back loaded (allowing it to countered), but the overall damage output is high enough to be lethal in that short window.

On the low end, the hefty face value of many of its skills makes it extremely durable in Open world, and is only taxed when overwhelmed. The OK sustained damage it what lets get a pass in Open world, since it pairs well enough with your durability to not constantly die at the drop of hat. But the moment you're put under real pressure, the Ranger can't rely on burst damage to deal with problems, which quickly shifts the demand toward active defenses to offset the lack of overwhelming burst damage. To get into serious damage builds, Rangers have to invest heavily as Glass cannon, and shifts all of its defenses into mobility, dodges and kiting. And this is where the problems with the Weapon skills start to stand out. The 1h Weapons have very obtuse defense features (if they have any), and main hands were designed to lightly kite a target, or stand there and just auto attack it. I wish this was a joke, but the math backs this up.... Sword and Dagger autos are the highest reliable DPS regardless off hand pairing. MH Axe is even weirder in that Split Blade is the most significant damage, but only at Point Blank so all 5 projectiles hit the intended target (and basically your only MH condi option if you aren't running Soulbeast).

With 2 handed weapons the Struggle is different. The 2h weapons are generally not worth running without their associated weapon trait, but there is major competition between trait lines, because Power damage modifiers are spread across 3 trait lines, Condition damage spread across 2, and the Elite specs having oddly specific synergy with other trait lines. You also have problems running mixed Ranged/Melee due to the trait layouts, despite this diversity being highly desirable, leaving only a hand full combinations that yield competitive damage (or support). Hands down the biggest victim of all this is Lb/GS..... arguably the best functional and logical weapon paring the Ranger has, but demands vexing compromises to properly augment. Power builds gain the most immediate benefits from Marksmans (raw damage modifiers) and Skirmishing (Crit damage modifiers), but your third trait line is your hardest choice. Core Ranger would take Beast Mastery, as its the only other line compatible with Power damage (adding extra sustain damage, but nothing for bursts). Druid gives up extra personal damage basically just to get access to Grace of the Land as a group buff.

With SoulBeast, the toss up is between the potential of a Condi build vs a Power Build. Condi on soulbeast is very potent.... I mean ridiculously so. Despite the longer ramp up time, dishing out an average of 4k condi per second (and the potential of 10k surges, with only personal buffs btw) is definitely worth taking notice of. The SB/X/Torch combo can deal with trash mobs easily enough, and Iboga is still great for the added AOEs and condi synergy. Which brings us to Power SB...... while there are LOT of modifiers you can abuse to deal heavy power damage, these are a LOT more discriminate, and a lot more work to properly setup. Power SB builds (SB, BM, MM) work on focusing damage modifiers to magnify the high damage of Maul (GS2)..... The Combo (while merged) is Sic'em, Maul, Hilt Bash, Maul again, followed by Worldly Impact- resulting in guaranteed Crit on each, +100% damage on top of all the passive damage modifiers for each Maul, and roughly +50% on the other 2. A 15-20k Maul hit isn't out of the question. The down side is that you're damage isn't nearly epic outside this combo. Granted, the GS's auto damage is also pretty solid, but it also means sticking in Melee range. Using Maul on Cool down against weaker mobs still hits for a lot. I would also state that the GS's defenses are really good in comparison to every other weapon it has, and is the only one I'd trust to actually keep in melee range with.

Aside from Support Druid and a WvW build, this sums up Ranger's "Think box"..... and thinking outside of this is punishable by mediocre performance, and a constant nagging feeling that this could be so much better if you had just one more trait to make it work. On paper it sounds great, because the builds seem to perfectly fit... but what I didn't fully go into is how the damage builds are Glass cannons by nature, and trying to take sustain traits or defense utilities very clearly messes with your damage potential. Frustratingly so in WvW and PvP, where you need mixed traits to not get burst down in an opening attack.

Good info! Thanks for being so thorough! I am currently dusting off my ranger that I basically leveled to 80, unlocked druid, and then never played again. It's just never been a class I've enjoyed. But I am looking for something new and I haven't tried Soulbeast yet, so yesterday I started unlocking the spec. I am interested in the condi build and I'll be practicing it in open world. Any further advice on that? Use the metabattle build or would you recommend something different? And how would you say it is when soloing tougher challenges (champions, etc.)?

Thanks to both of you for giving all this info.I guess it's now time to unlock Soulbeast and try GS by myself to see if I enjoy the gameplay.Is there any pet with funny skills by the way ?

@oOAvengerOo.6714 said:Thanks to both of you for giving all this info.I guess it's now time to unlock Soulbeast and try GS by myself to see if I enjoy the gameplay.Is there any pet with funny skills by the way ?

Well because you stated that you like mobility i can recommend Canines, birds and rockgazelle.The last one is PoF exclusive but has good CC and Mobility and gives power-ferocity stat boost when merged.Canines have two leaps, a large one and a shorter one with CC and birds have perma swiftnesd via skill and a huge leap, perfect for engaging a new enemy group.

You can try all classes in the PvP area (training golem), you get boosted to 80 and can try out most stat combinations without spending anything. Alternatively, you can use your level 80 boost on all classes, the boost works like a 'try' system where you later can finalize your choice, but first you can try out the classes.

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:You can try all classes in the PvP area (training golem), you get boosted to 80 and can try out most stat combinations without spending anything. Alternatively, you can use your level 80 boost on all classes, the boost works like a 'try' system where you later can finalize your choice, but first you can try out the classes.

I forgot to say that I already play with ranger. I leveled ranger by doing some dungeons with guildmates back in they day. Then with craft.And I play a bit to get HoT spec but stop after some bloodstones farm.So I will play directly as a lvl 80 druide or ranger to get Soulbeast Spec. Just need to find a HP train maybe to make it less boring.>

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@oOAvengerOo.6714 said:Thanks to both of you for giving all this info.I guess it's now time to unlock Soulbeast and try GS by myself to see if I enjoy the gameplay.Is there any pet with funny skills by the way ?

I will look into it thanks for the info